Old Washoe Club

The Old Washoe Club stands at 112 South C Street in Virginia City, Nevada, inside the National Historic Landmark district built on the Comstock Lode. The club of mining magnates, editors and mine superintendents that gave the building its name organised in February 1875, bought Reynold's building on B Street for $13,000, opened on 1 June and lost everything in the Great Fire of 26 October 1875. It reopened in the Douglas block on C Street in September 1876 and closed for good in September 1897, when Major James Cummings decided it would no longer pay its way. The saloon downstairs outlived it by more than a century, and the empty floors above, described as a condemned building with a broken skylight as early as 1949, are now the ghost tour: a spiral staircase, a back room the tour calls the crypt, and a lady in blue whom the modern retellings call Lena. The earliest printed report of that figure dates from 1994, and she had no name until about 2006.

The Washoe Club existed as a club before it existed as a building. The Territorial Enterprise of 21 February 1875, reproduced at length on the club's own history page, reported a meeting held "yesterday afternoon at 3 o'clock at the office of Whitman & Wood in the California Building, for the purpose of taking steps for the organization of a social club in this city", and printed the terms: "The club begins with sixty charter members, who pay in $150 each, making $9,000 with which to start." A Virginia City dispatch dated 5 March carried the next step to the rest of the state: "The Washoe Club ha[v]e purchased Reynold's building on B street f[o]r their Club House, paying therefor $13,000. It will be fitted up in fine style." The rooms opened on 1 June 1875. That month the club's prize curiosity was a cribbage board carved in the state prison by the highwayman who had robbed Colonel Stone, and the Carson Daily Appeal noted that it "is at present at the rooms of the Washoe Club, and is considered quite a curiosity". Five months later the club had no rooms at all. Nevada State Historic Marker No. 228 dates the disaster to the hour: "Early on the morning of October 26, 1875, a coal oil lamp was knocked over in a nearby boarding house and burst into flames. Strong winds spread the blaze and thirty-three blocks of structures were leveled." The National Historic Landmark nomination for the Virginia City Historic District puts the loss at $12,000,000 and records the consequence for the town's fabric: "Most of the buildings in that section date from after the fire." The club rebuilt on C Street instead of on its own B Street lot. The Enterprise of 3 September 1876 described the new quarters in the Douglas block as "more elegant than those on 'B' Street which were consumed by the great conflagration of last October", comprising "in all, eight apartments", and "reached by a flight of stairs from 'C' Street and also by steps from 'B'". Harry M. Gorham, who drank there as a young man, remembered the same climb in his 1939 memoir: "The Washoe Club was almost next door. It was up a steep flight of stairs, in the Joe Douglas Building." The end is dated to the day, and it was reported as an obituary for the town. On 10 September 1897 the Morning Appeal of Carson City reprinted the Enterprise under the headline "It Has Become a Thing of the Past". Quoting from the digitised page, with obvious scanning errors in brackets: "One o[f] th[e] saddest [signs] of the de[c]ay of Virginia C[i]t[y] is the passing of the old Washoe Club. It is [now] closed forever." The Enterprise named the man who closed it and the sum he was collecting: "Yesterday M[a]jor James Cummings who has ha[d] charge of the club recently, concluded that it would no longer pay its way, and it is now closed [u]p for good", after taking "monthly dues of $2 50 from the few remain[ing] members" and making "what he could out of the bar". The keys went to "Frank Fredericks, one o[f] the two charter members who still remain in Vir[g]inia, the other being Captain J. B. Overton". The same column dates the incorporation to "February 27, 1875", six days after the organising meeting the paper had itself reported, and it ends with the sentence that every later account quotes: "The closing of the W[a]shoe Club mark[s] an era i[n] the history of Nevada, as did its opening." The saloon on the ground floor outlived the club upstairs by a century. Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg found the upper storeys derelict in 1949: "The apartments of the Washoe Club are unten[]anted and through the broken skylight of the condemned building the winter weathers have descended to rot the woodwork", though a caller could still "climb the rusted circular iron staircase which still leads to the rooms of the Washoe Club". The age of the building itself is genuinely disputed. Julie Nicoletta's survey for the Society of Architectural Historians dates it "Early 1860s", gives the address as "46-48 S. C St.", and lists the tenants under the club: "The brick building housed the club as well as Con Ahern's Capital Bar", plus "a stock brokerage, a stationery store, and a hardware store", with "A rooming house occupied the second story, and the third story contained office space." Deke Castleman's Nevada Handbook calls it "built in 1875 after the great fire", which is also the year in the Wikipedia infobox. The wall itself carries a third answer: the sign painted across the top floor reads "OLD WASHOE CLUB 1862", and the marker inside the saloon door repeats it as "Millionaires Club and Oldest Saloon in Virginia City [ ] Since [ ] 1862" above a text that dates the club "in the mid-1870's". This entry follows the documents rather than the paintwork: the club is recorded from February 1875 and the C Street rooms from September 1876.

The Washoe Club Museum and Saloon occupies 112 South C Street, Virginia City, NV 89440, telephone (775) 847-4467. Its own directions page gave the opening hours on 7 September 2026 as "Sunday - Thursday: 11AM - 7PM" and "Friday & Saturday: 11AM - 11PM". The ghost tour is the way into the upper floors. The club's tour page, consulted the same day, states: "Each guided tour is about 40 minutes in length. We offer tours 7 days a week and each tour includes ALL 3 floors of our historical site. Tickets are sold onsite at the Washoe Club." Prices are listed as "Adults $10 - each" and "Children(16/Under) $5 - each", and "Most tours start on the hour". The same page warns "Please excuse our dust: Restoration is continuous and ongoing!" That ticket was cheaper within living memory: the Wayback Machine's capture of the identical page on 24 July 2019 reads "Adults $8/each". Travel Nevada, the state tourism agency, still published the older figures when the Wayback Machine archived its entry on 2 July 2022 - "$8 for adults and $5 for visitors under 16" - along with the only overnight price I have been able to date: "Overnight investigations are $400 per group, which includes access to all three floors, including the crypt and spiral staircase. Each member of your party must also become a basic member of The Washoe Club Restoration project at the $20 level." On 7 September 2026 the club's own "Overnight Investigations" and "Members" menu items returned 404, and "Haunted Museum" redirected to its Ghost Adventures page, so the state agency's 2022 text remains the last published version of those terms. The tour covers three storeys of an 1870s brick building reached by stairs, and the club publishes no accessibility information. The marker inside the saloon door reads "Millionaires Club and Oldest Saloon in Virginia City [ ] Since [ ] 1862", with the note "[Marker Located on Back Wall of Saloon]". Nevada State Historic Marker No. 228, "The Great Fire of 1875", stands a short walk away and tells the fire half of the story from the state's side. The building is a contributing property of the Virginia City Historic District, a National Historic Landmark designated on 4 July 1961 and listed on the National Register on 15 October 1966 under reference number 66000458; the inventory of historic structures attached to that nomination, "prepared by Charles W. Snell, February 20, 1961", carries the club as item 7.